Governors and Senators

In July 1894, Governor John Marshall Stone, who was inaugurated as governor on three separate occasions, and served as governor longer than any other man in Mississippi history, was arrested by Secret Service agents for counterfeiting the currency of the United States. The accusation of counterfeiting resulted from the fact that the state of Mississippi had issued a special state warrant that was similar in color, size, shape, and appearance to United States currency.

When Colonel Ridgley C. Powers was discharged from the United States Army in December 1865, he decided to remain in Mississippi rather than return to his native state of Ohio. He purchased some land in Noxubee County near Shuqualak and soon became a successful planter. In 1868, he was appointed sheriff of Noxubee County by the military governor of Mississippi.

James L. Alcorn was Mississippi’s first elected Republican governor. Alcorn had previously served in the state legislature of Kentucky and Mississippi, and had risen to the rank of general in the Confederate military service during the Civil War.

When Governor Benjamin G. Humphreys was removed from office June 15, 1868, President Andrew Johnson appointed Adelbert Ames provisional governor of Mississippi. At the time of his appointment, Ames was also the military governor of the fourth military district which had been established under federal Reconstruction policy and included Arkansas and Mississippi. Ames continued as both military and provisional governor until the reestablishment of civil authority on March 10, 1870.

For five years after the Civil War, both martial law and civil authority existed concurrently in Mississippi. That phenomenon created a constitutional entanglement that scholars have yet to unravel. Governor Benjamin Grubb Humphreys had the misfortune of being caught in that tangle of conflicting and often competing authority. When Governor Humphreys was inaugurated October 16, 1865, he shared power with a provisional governor and was eventually removed by a military governor, whose authority he challenged and whose orders he countermanded. (See William Sharkey and Adelbert Ames.)

Following the arrest and imprisonment of Governor Charles Clark, Mississippi was for the third time without a chief executive. In the confusion after the Civil War, Mississippi was under martial law until June 13, 1865, when President Andrew Johnson appointed William Sharkey as provisional governor of the state. The responsibility for restoring order and gaining the re-admission of Mississippi could not have fallen to a better qualified individual.

Governor Charles Clark has the distinction of being one of the three governors of Mississippi to be arrested and imprisoned. The other two are John Quitman and Theodore Bilbo. When the Civil War ended, Governor Clark was arrested by Union authorities and incarcerated briefly at Fort Pulaski in Savannah, Georgia. A witness described the arrest of the former Confederate general, who had twice been wounded, first at Shiloh and then at Baton Rouge:

William McWillie migrated to Mississippi from South Carolina, but, unlike most other antebellum Mississippians who migrated to the state, he did not come during his early childhood. McWillie moved to Mississippi during his middle years after a successful banking career in Camden, South Carolina. McWillie, who was born in the Kershaw District of South Carolina on November 17, 1795, had also served four years in the South Carolina Legislature.

Known to his friends and followers as “Johnny McRae of Chickasawhay,” Governor John J. McRae sailed his steamer Triumph up and down the Chickasawhay River “as if it were the Mississippi itself.” McRae was a folk hero and was extremely popular with the people of Mississippi. He was described by a contemporary as “bright ... humorous and fascinating.”

Governor John Jones Pettus has the distinction of serving the shortest term of governor in the state’s history. He served for five days between the resignation of Henry Foote on January 5 and the inauguration of his successor, John J. McRae, on January 10, 1854. Governor Pettus is best known, however, as the governor who took Mississippi out of the Union in 1861.